Improve detection of small molecules

Studying the molecular distribution of small molecules is highly important to understand the function of pharmaceutical drugs and native biological molecules in normal and diseased tissue. It is therefore crucial to avoid post-sampling changes and degradation as this will disturb the in vivo localization and complicate the analysis of distribution. Heat stabilization preserves the quality of tissue samples from the moment of excision throughout the entire analysis workflow, thereby increasing the accuracy of downstream analytical results.

Prevention of small molecule drug breakdown

A comparison of heat-stabilized and snap-frozen mouse brains showed that the distribution of the drug metabolite Raclopride* remained constant in heat-stabilized samples. In snap-frozen samples, the amount of the small molecule continuously decreased due to rapid degradation. * Raclopride is an antagonist binder to the D2 dopamine receptor with a body half-life of 20 minutes.Results courtesy of Dr Richard Goodwin (AstraZeneca & Uppsala University) & Prof. Per E. Andrén (Uppsala University)

Heat stabilization permanently stops metabolic conversion

Average percentage intensity ratios of ATP & AMP across 4 mouse brain sections. A comparison of the levels of ATP and AMP in both snap frozen and heat stabilized mouse brain showed that, in heat stabilized samples, the levels of ATP were detected at higher levels compared to AMP, whereas the reverse situation was found in snap frozen samples. The lower ATP/AMP ratio in snap frozen samples clearly indicates continuous metabolic activity during sample preparation.Results adapted from University of Warwick (Localisation of adenine nucleotides in heat-stabilised mouse brains using ion mobility enabled MALDI imaging, Blatherwick, E. Q., et al. International Journal of Mass Spectrometry 2013).

Visit our User support zone to learn more on how to work with heat stabilized samples and view guidelines for several downstream analytical methods and the key parameters important to think about for each workflow.

"Denator’s heat stabilization technology was valuable to our extensive mapping project. When building a reference database we need to secure the best possible correlation with the in vivo situation, and Denator's technology enabled us to ensure exactly that."Prof. Jesper Olsen, NFF Centre for Protein Research, Denmark